Caspar Weinberger

Caspar Weinberger (18 August 1917-28 March 2006) was Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 31 December 1969 to 6 August 1970 (succeeding Paul Rand Dixon and preceding Miles Kirkpatrick), Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 12 June 1972 to 1 February 1973 (succeeding George P. Shultz and preceding Roy Ash), US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from 12 February 1973 to 8 August 1975 (succeeding Elliot Richardson and preceding F. David Mathews), and US Secretary of Defense from 21 January 1981 to 23 November 1987 (succeeding Harold Brown and preceding Frank Carlucci).

Biography
Caspar Weinberger was born in San Francisco, California on 18 August 1917 to a Jewish father and an Episcopalian mother, and he graduated from Harvard before serving in the US 41st Infantry Division in the Pacific during World War II. From 1945 to 1947, he worked as a law clerk for a federal judge before joining a San Francisco law firm, and he served in the California State Assembly from 1953 to 1959 as a Republican. he went on to serve as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. An accomplished private sector businessman, he became general counsel of the Bechtel Corporation and Chairman of Forbes magazine. In 1981, he was appointed to serve as President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, playing a key role in the administration's Strategic Defense Initiative and the Iran-Contra affair. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987, and he was awarded with an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.